THE SIX DAY WAR JIGSAW
The aim of this exercise is to show students:
1.
How the answer of Question 4 is assessing their ability to ‘synthesize’.
2.
How Question 4, Paper 1 is basically a form of a classic IB essay answer.
3.
How the different building bricks of an ideal Question 4 answer/IB essay should be put together.
INTRODUCTION
The architecture of an ideal essay takes the form of an explicitly stated, clearly structured, well reasoned, judicious, balanced consideration of the arguments, supported by historical evidence.
The building bricks of the architecture of that ideal IB essay are:
(a) In terms of CONTENT
ARGUMENTS: Clear, reasonable, overall arguments;
CLAIMS/POINTS: claims or points made to support those overall arguments;
EVIDENCE: evidence used to support those claims/points;
(a) evidence taken from the sources;
(b) evidence taken from your ‘background knowledge’; the use of relevant historical parallels where possible and if appropriate; references to historiography if possible and where appropriate.
(b) In terms of FORM
INTRODUCTIONS
RHETORICAL STRUCUTRE:
(a) clear two or three sided structures;
(b) claims/points arranged in ascending order of importance within those arguments;
CONCLUSIONS:
(a) sub-conclusions;
(b) conclusions;
LINKING PHRASES: the literary cement that holds it all together.

Underline in different colours, the linking phrases, the claims, the quotations from the sources that support the claims,
1. What argument does the question want you to consider?
Whether the Six Day War of 1967 was a local affair or involved a lot of foreign influence.
2. What are the two possible sides of that argument?
On the on hand, that it was a local affair, and on the other hand that foreign influence played an important role.
3. Read the answer to Q.4 overleaf and highlight the following elements in the following colours:
Linking phrases – pink/purple
Arguments/Cases – blue type
Claims/Points
– italics and bold
Evidence (sources) - green
Evidence (own knowledge) - yellow
Introductions – (not so much used in Q4)
Conclusions (sub and main) – red type
Historical parallels – underline and bold
Rhetorical structure – in between asterixes * [Argument][Counter-argument]*
4.. Highlight in red the two phrases (classic linking phrases) which have been used in this answer to introduce the two sides of the argument.
5. Which sources are used to claim it was a local war, and which sources have been used to argue that foreign influence played a large role.(place them in the order of their appearance)
LOCAL WAR
Source B.
6. Highlight in green the first ‘sub-conclusion’
FOREIGN INFLUENCE
Sources A, D, C, E.
7. Highlight in blue a claim made about one of the sources being evidence of no foreign involvement.
8. Now highlight and underline in blue the citation taken from that source to help prove the claim made in 6.
9. Highlight in yellow the ‘background knowledge’ used as evidence to support this side of the argument.
10. Underline in black the two historical parallels used, which shows evidence that you are also thinking about the Paper 2 World History Topic ‘The Causes, Practices and Effects of
War’.

11. The golden rule in any IB essay: “Use the question to structure your answer.” Now italicise two phrases that have been used in this answer which reveal that this answer is well and truly focused on the question.

SIX DAY WAR OF 1967 – A BRIEF, LOCAL WAR?

*[Argument] At first glance, one might agree with the argument that states that this war of
1967 was in fact a very local war . Source B does not give any sense of the cause of the war, and certainly not any international or foreign cause.
It does not explain how come the guns are all pointed towards Israel Moreover, even to the extent that any such cause can be read into it, it makes no mention whatsoever of the international influence on the Middle
East as a reason for the outbreak of the war.
The 8 guns lined up suggest that the war is certainly more than just the Palestinians or the Egyptians against the Israelis. But those guns only suggest the involvement only of a number of Arab , in other words, local Middle East nations . None of them can be described as a
‘foreign influence’
on this war, only ‘local influences’ . Moreover, in terms of my own knowledge of the causes of the Six Day War, the actual war appears to have been a local war fought between local Middle Eastern participants
(in this case Egypt, Syria and Israel), unlike say the Suez Crisis of 1956 which involved the
‘foreign influence’ of Britain and France
. Whether one says the trigger of the war was
Nasser’s closing down of the Straits of Tiran, or the Israelis shooting down of Syrian MIG jets, either way it can be said to have been caused by local Middle Eastern factors . On top of that, its participants , particularly in terms of those who died, be it the 15,000 Egyptians or the
1000 Israeli soldiers , all appear to have been local.
Thus there is evidence in these sources as well as from my own knowledge which supports the argument that see the 1967 war very much as a local war.
Unlike, for example, World War 1, it was short and did not create a whirlwind of fighting into which it dragged lots of other countries outside the Middle East; nor can the fighting be said to have spread from the Egyptian-Israeli borders into Europe or other parts of Africa, as is the case with World War 2 .
* [Argument]
* [Counter-argument] Having said that, there is a great deal of evidence in these sources which suggests the opposite, in other words, that foreign influence in the Middle East was a major reason for the outbreak of the Six Day War in 1967 . To begin with Source A, which lays out the reasoning of the Israeli government in terms of its reaction to the closure of the Straits of Tiran by Egypt couches all of its reasoning in terms of the international perspective and context of the situation. In other words, Israel is trying to make it appear as more than just an act of aggression by Egypt against Israel. For example, it suggests that
‘international law’ has been violated. Moreover, it emphasises that the Straits of Tiran are an
‘international waterway’, and that its closure it a ‘blow at the sovereign rights’ of various
‘nations’, that Israel had been in touch with some of these governments and that therefore
Israel had gained international support for its case. Similarly in Source D, beyond the fact that
Nasser suggests any conflict would not be ‘confined to one spot on the Syrian or Egyptian borders (without explicitly suggesting the role of international powers), Nasser does explicitly points out the importance of the US and British support for Israel, as well as the importance of the Soviet Union’s “attitude” as far as the Arabs were concerned, for “together with the
Arabs…it would resist any further aggression”. Indeed, the case for foreign influence as a major cause of the war in Source C is even more blatant. For not only is it a statement by the
Soviet ambassador, it is one which suggests the aggression of the Israelis (“hoped to take
Syria by surprise’, and “Israel is once again to blame for a dangerous aggravation of tension”), and seems to celebrate to the point of exaggeration the “solidarity” of the “Arab
States”. It even goes so far as to explicitly state that ‘anyone’ trying to unleash aggression in the Middle East (itself a suggestion that the agressors may be of international origin, in other words the American and British supporters of Israel) would encounter ‘strong opposition’ from the Soviet Union. Similarly if Source E is really an extract from the private phone conversation between Nasser and Hussein, then it too suggests not only that foreign influence was very important in this war , in this case how the US and Britain were militarily involved in this conflict (though it does not suggest they have caused it), but also that this was important enough for them to announce it to the international public and to get Syria to do the same.

Moreover, given that foreign influence had played a major role in all the main disputes in the recent Middle East, be it the Suez Crisis, or the evolution of the entire Israeli-Palestine issue, even all the way back to since Cromer’s rule in Egypt, then it comes as no surprise that the majority of the evidence supports this view.
* [Counter-argument]
Therefore, it is clear that most of these sources and the majority of background knowledge used in this answer suggests that, for all that the 1967 war appears to be a brief war whose actual theatre was highly restricted and distinctly local to the Middle East , behind the scenes, as it were, one can see that the role of the personages of ‘foreign influence’ in that war was considerable, if not actually dominan t.